The Spin-Off of CASUAL+Y launched in 1999, this focuses more on the lives of the medics than the actual emergencies involved. However, it is nearly always set within the hospital.
Like its parent show, Holby City has been running for an alarmingly long time, leading to much cast turnover, although unlike its parent show none of the original cast are still present. As of autumn 2016, the longest-running regular character is Ric Griffin (Hugh Quarshie), who debuted in 2001; the iconic Jac Naylor (Rosie Marcel), meanwhile, debuted in 2005.
The show finally drew to a close in 2022, with the BBC citing efforts to produce more programmes based outside of the south of England.
This show provides examples of:
- Be Yourself: A 2018 episode also had a moral that "Being a Girly Girl is okay, and it's not just about fashion and makeup, and some girly-girls are badasses, and you shouldn't feel pressure to deviate from the look that suits you or try and be a Tomboy even if they pressure you to and make fun of you for being girly". She was a One-Shot Character.
- But Not Too Gay: Averted. The gay couples get just as frisky as the straight couples (which is to say, not terribly frisky given that it airs at 8pm on the BBC, but the snogs are equally heated for both).
- The Cast Show Off: Jules Knight, who plays Harry Tressler, is a former member of classical crossover band Blake. The inevitable demonstration of his singing skills finally took place in his first Christmas Episode.
- Crossover: With its parent show CASUAL+Y. Done as the mini-series Casualty@Holby City in 2004 and 2005. A similarly large-scale one occurred in 2019, focused on a cyber-attack. As the two are set in the same building, however, many smaller incidents have occurred, with occasional permanent character moves.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Linden Cullen, Penny Valentine.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Happens on multiple occasions, particularly for security guard and cafe staff characters.
- Everything Is Online: A major plot point in the 2019 crossover. The hospital gets hit by a cyber attack and it turns out most of the electronics are connected.
- "Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome: Has happened a fair bit during the 2003-2005 series.
- Foreshadowing: The episode "Serenity", which introduced Bernie Wolfe, also featured AAU clinical lead Serena Campbell grumbling that her ward needs better trauma facilities. Almost exactly six months later, the AAU got its very own trauma bay — headed by none other than renowned trauma surgeon and AAU co-clinical-lead Ms Bernie Wolfe. No wonder they wind up falling in love with each other.
- Hard Truth Aesop: A 2014 episode had the moral "Older doesn't necessarily mean wiser, and if you can't reason with an elderly person, don't try to, let them suffer the consequences of their own making.", when an abusive elderly patient yelled at a nurse. This One-Shot Character, a grouchy old man seemed to treat the hospital more like a hotel than a hospital. This defied the "Respect your elders" moral that is often taught.
- Held Gaze: Serena Campbell (Catherine Russell) and Bernie Wolfe (Jemma Redgrave) are constantly sharing long, meaningful looks. After the episode where they finally kiss, one of the producers noted that they "could only play sizzling glances for so long" before the inevitable happened.
- Informed Attractiveness: Jac Naylor, although Rosie Marcel is quite the Ms. Fanservice.
- Insufferable Genius/Rightly Self-Righteous: Just about the entire cast. The entire medical team are ripe with attitude problems and constantly go over the heads of officials and regulations, it almost always only helps in saving patients lives.
- It's a Wonderful Plot: Elliot is shown Holby as the hospital he never worked at in a Christmas Bizarro Episode.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Jac Naylor and Michael Griffin are this. One episode concerns Jac nursing a baby.
- Karma Houdini: Subverted with Ric Griffin - He stole Michael Spence's wife, and generally comes off as smug when he constantly relays messages to Michael from his ex-wife & Michael suffers a setback in his career. It's a subversion, because Ric has cancer, which appears to be both Laser-Guided Karma & letting him get away with all of this as other characters feel sorry for him. At the same time.
- Played straight, however, with Oliver Valentine, who looks as though he's going to get away with continuing to practise as a doctor illegally.
- Some of the patients' immoral behavior (though usually caught out) is sometimes left uncovered. One patient supposedly was an adulterer whose manic wife caused him to have a road accident. It's heavily implied she will continue making his life hell throughout the recovery.
- Long-Runner Cast Turnover: None of the regular characters from when the show started in 1999 are still present; half of the current cast only joined in 2011 or later.
- One True Love: Serena calls Bernie "the one great love affair of my life", and Bernie wholly returns the sentiment. If any one couple on this show has ever been written as this, it's these two.
- Prejudice Aesop: The show has this an Omnipresent Trope in its Long Runner history (23 years), so listing all the examples would take up too much room, but this aesop is more of an Enforced Trope due to the BBC's public service commitments.
- Prodigal Hero: Henrik Hanssen, who left Sweden after his father was disgraced for using Nazi medical research. Henrik considered this unforgivable since his mother was a holocaust survivor and blamed his father for driving her to commit suicide. Turns out, his mother convinced his father to use the data and she killed herself for an entirely different reason.
- Rhetorical Question Blunder: Serena tries and fails to let prize-winning doctor Arthur Digby know he's put his foot in it:Serena: The F1 prize wasn't for tact, was it?Arthur: Ah, no. Academic excellence.
- Ripped from the Headlines: A few plots, but most notably the hospital gets hit by a cyber attack not long after the real NHS was.
- Saw "Star Wars" Twenty-Seven Times: Comedian Toby Hadoke plays a character in the episode "Snow Queens" who shamelessly boats over how many times he's watched The Matrix.
- Speech-Centric Work: No matter how much medical action there is, there will always be a very heavy ratio of dialogue:action each episode.
- Spin-Off: Obviously.
- For two years had its own spinoff in the Police Procedural Holby Blue.
- Status Quo Is God: Zig-zagged. Although there are many permanent changes per season, characters' love lives rarely last, and the Girl of the Week or Boy of the Week usually is gone by the end of the story arc or season; also, some characters do not learn the moral of the story.
- Trauma Conga Line: Henrik Hanssen, the Benevolent Boss has had a father who was disgraced for Nazi medical research, and now is a victim of child abuse and has to deal with his abuser in a current storyline.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Paul Rose, an anaesthetist who had been a Recurring Character since 2000, stopped appearing without explanation in 2010.
- Will They or Won't They?: Subverted with Bernie and Serena. By the time the former runs off to Ukraine on secondment, the only people who aren't sure whether or not they'll get together in the end are Bernie and Serena themselves — it being obvious to everyone else with eyes that the two were practically made for each other.
